Oluwanifemi Ojo
The CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, met with two executive members of the White House on Friday in Washington to have discussion on how the automaker and Democratic President Joe Biden may collaborate to promote the manufacture of electric vehicles and accelerate the electrification of American transportation networks.
According to a White House spokesperson who spoke to Reuters, Biden’s senior advisor for clean energy innovation, John Podesta, and Mitch Landrieu, who is in charge of infrastructure expenditures, met with Musk.
According to Reuter, Musk wrote “True” in response to a link to a previous version of this story on Twitter.
Podesta, Landrieu, and Musk were seen by a Reuters witness on Friday entering a downtown building that houses both the Center for American Progress, a think tank that Podesta established, as well as Tesla’s Washington lobbying office. After about 30 minutes, Landrieu and Podesta departed without responding to any inquiries. About 45 minutes after Podesta and Landrieu, Musk departed.
Meanwhile, relationships between Biden, who has advocated for businesses to use union labor, and Musk, who has pushed to keep unions out of his plants, have frequently appeared antagonistic.
According to Reuter, after highlighting EV production by GM and Ford in a tweet but excluding Tesla, Musk referred to Biden as “a damp sock puppet in human form” last year.
Only after Musk repeatedly complained about being ignored and more than a year after taking office did Biden officially acknowledge Tesla’s contribution to the production of American electric vehicles.
In June, after Musk expressed concerns about the economy in June, Biden compared Tesla with Ford and sarcastically wished him “lots of luck” on his “journey to the moon.”
However, Musk has maintained a long-term good relationship with the American government, which has persisted under the Biden administration.